@Dee@fedi.underscore.world: "worldbuilding a dystopian future where Earth is divided into six numbered regions, and seeing how long it takes people to realize they’re DVD regions". A map of the DVD regions.
Does anyone else remember when Windows 98 would let you change your DVD drive's region, but only let you do it five times total before you were permanently locked into the region you selected the fifth time?
I was so tempted to change the setting just for fun, but never did because the warning message scared the shit out of 12-year-old me.
An extremely successful physical format for storing data, mostly as video, released in 1996, it is still one of, if not the most popular video format sold globally.
And while they tried to DRM it, the DVD standard still ended up having to maintain compatibility across all readers and discs, but for bluray they regularly deprecate older readers who no longer can play newer movies because new releases use new encryption keys which the old readers don't have access to (and for this reason the PS consoles are the best bluray movie players because Sony keeps them updated)
Never forget, there was only a single key for DVD decryption, once found, DVDs could be copied. There were lawsuits trying to suppress the knowledge, but people started printing the key on tshirts.... It was out there and DVD copy applications became common
Some things make more sense with additional context. Like, Europe was on the PAL standard while Japan was on NTSC, so even if you put them both in the same region, they couldn't watch each other's discs, so the region code could be re-used without it actually conflicting.
That chart says Vietnam is a mix of 220 and 127 V at 50 Hz. There might be some places that use 127 V, but it's certainly not anywhere close to an equal split. Everywhere I saw had 220 V.
I guess it could be used in many different ways, but when I read it I thought of it in the context of a homebrew campaign's lore (maybe ttrpg memes have corrupted my mind?)
There's three regions missing here - region 0 is "worldwide", region 7 is "special purpose", Oscar screening DVDs and the like, and region 8 is "international waters" for cruise ships and things. You can set several regions on the same disk, to make a 2/4/5 and the like. Set each region as a bit, and you can store that in a single byte - that makes it very easy to flash the firmware on DVD players to decide which disks they can play. Aus/NZ will want content in English and Latin America will want Spanish or Portuguese, so the DVD consortium can still get up to their often-illegal, certainly immoral, price fixing and bullshit.
Really, fuck DVDs. So much potential in the increased capacity, and then it was mired in crap like this and "disabled user operations" so that you can't skip trailers. Time to raise the black flag and set sail for prosperous waters, me hearties.
For a second I thought maybe due to their historical colonial ties to the UK but that logic falls apart when you realize AU and NZ are in a separate region from the UK... so... 🤷♂️
